Healthwatch with Dr. Leana Wen: Coping with COVID variant BA.2

It’s the Midday Healthwatch, with Dr. Leana Wen. The BA.5 variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus is causing COVID cases to spike yet again. How long will this current uptick last? Today on Midday, what this new, highly transmissible variant tells us about the future of COVID. Vaccines are readily available for children, but parents don’t appear to be eager to get their kids a jab. And what about monkeypox? Is it a pandemic? Have we heeded the lessons of the Coronavirus well enough to handle this latest virus? Dr. Leana Wen is one of America’s most trusted and knowledgeable public health experts. She is a former health commissioner of Baltimore and an emergency physician.  She teaches at the George Washington University School of Public Health.  She writes a column for the Washington Post.  She’s a medical analyst for CNN, a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution and the author of Lifelines: A Doctor's Journey in the Fight for Public Health. Dr. Wen joins us on Zoom…and we welcome your questions and comments as well.Email us at [email protected], tweet us: @MiddayWYPR, or call us at 410-662-8780.